GetPlayerFromAbbreviation() Custom Function

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#1

Have you ever tried creating an admin script, but always wondered how developers make it so you can abbreviate the spelling of a players name? For example, how they can do “:kick Rob” instead of “:kick Robert2311”. In this tutorial, I’ll be giving you the basic code on how to create a function that does just this, going through the steps on each line.

The function will look somewhat like this:

GetPlayerFromAbbreviation("pro")
--> programher (Instance)

Here’s the code for the function:

function GetPlayerFromAbbreviation(abbreviation)
  for i,v in ipairs(game:GetService("Players"):GetPlayers()) do -- looping through players
    if v.Name:lower():sub(1,#abbreviation) == abbreviation:lower() then -- checking if the lowercase version of the players name (subbed) matches the lowercase version of the abbreviation
      return v -- if it does, return the players instance
    else
      if #game:GetService("Players"):GetPlayers() == i then -- checking if the index matches the player count (AKA if there are no more players to loop through)
       return false -- returns false if no players matching the abbreviation was found
      else
       continue -- continues the loop if there are still players to loop through
     end
    end
  end
end

This is a basic example of how you can use this in an admin script:

local admins = {"programher"}
game:GetService("Players").PlayerAdded:Connect(function(player)
   player.Chatted:Connect(function(message)
     local args = message:split(" ")
     if args[1]:lower() == ":kick" and admins[player.Name] then
      if args[2] then
        if GetPlayerFromAbbreviation(args[2]) ~= false then -- checking for the player
          local target = GetPlayerFromAbbreviation(args[2]) -- player exists, set the target value to the function (with args[2] as the parameter)
          target:Kick("You were kicked by an administrator.")
        end
      end
     end
   end) 
end)

Remember, GetPlayerFromAbbreviation returns the players instance. Hope this helps!

4 Likes
#3

what if multiple players have names that start with “pro”?

#4

It returns the first player (according to the :GetPlayers()) array that starts with “pro”. Once returned, the whole function terminates.

#5

Change this to ipairs so it’s done alphabetically.

#6

I actually said “ipairs” and Mac corrected it to “pairs”.

1 Like
#7

I don’t really get the point of this, the loop would finish running anyways and you could put the return outside of it.

#8

I mean, it doesn’t really matter. But this specific line (technically) accounts for when a new player joins the game.

#9

Man, Me thinking i will never see the day that people would create their own functions that seems to function just like it was a official roblox function!

#10

Haha. I create functions like this all of the time, I decided to share a useful one with you guys. :slight_smile:

#11

Great thing! I also wanted to add this here! Have you wondered of just calling this function again and again from different scripts? Well now you don’t!

Just go ahead and do this!

_G.GetPlayerFromAbbreviation = function(abbreviation)
    -- The code
end

Then calling from another script:

_G.GetPlayerFromAbbreviation("rickrolled")
1 Like